10.19.2007

Every time Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, discusses his arrest in a sex sting at an airport bathroom it gets harder and harder to believe his story.

Craig was arrested in June and plead guilty to disorderly conduct after he was accused of soliciting sex from a male undercover police officer in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He’s now trying to withdraw his guilty plea. So far, a judge in Minnesota has refused, saying Craig’s plea was “accurate, voluntary and intelligent and supported by the evidence.”

After reading several accounts of the arrest and after listening to the senator during a lengthy television interview, we have plenty of questions.

If, as the senator maintains, the incident was a misunderstanding or a bizarre set of coincidences, why would the senator plead guilty and leave Minneapolis so quickly? If he was truly completely innocent as he maintains now, why plead guilty? Craig said he plead guilty in hopes of avoiding a media circus. Again, a senator should know that any time they’re arrested, it’s going to be a story, especially when a senator is accused of soliciting sex in an airport bathroom.

It’s hard to imagine a senator not having enough common sense or enough backbone to stand up for himself and shout “I’m innocent” to anyone who will listen. Pleading guilty quickly, leaving town and not telling your wife, your children or your lawyer seems like the behavior of a guilty man.

Comment: Nothing of his story makes sense: the "wide stance", the picking up of the TP off the floor, the hand gestures, the peaking into the toilet stall!